That Awkward Moment

Okay, in my defense, I think everyone saw this coming. Since when have I ever actually finished a story?

Sorry about that; I suppose I got a little angry there. Not at you guys, I assure you. Nah, I'm angry at myself for lacking the sense of commitment needed to finish what I started. To be fair, though, I've been working on (UN)Forgivable a bit recently, so you might see an update on that sometime this month. Despite it being my least popular story, it's my favorite one to write when I can actually find inspiration.

On a side note, I started working on this around the same time that I published Equal and Opposite. It's been on the backburner for a long time, what with real life screwing me over, but at seven this morning, I pulled off a miracle and doubled the word count, completing part one in a few short hours.

A'ight, I suppose you guys deserve a brief explanation of this story. I won't go into plot details other than that it's a complete AU, but I will tell you that there will probably only be three parts, if that. The first will be from Kirito's point of view, and the second will be from the other lead's perspective. Dunno about the third.

That's enough blabbering for now. I'll see you at the bottom!

You know that one meme going around the net, the one where you start a sentence with, "That awkward moment when" and end with something that somehow makes people laugh?

Well, I've been seriously considering making one of those to describe my current situation and posting it on my blog. The only difference would be the fact that this never made me laugh, and was never intended to amuse others.

If I were to go through with it, the text would be something like this:

"That awkward moment when you find out that your unrequited love is that online friend you're meeting IRL so you can both discuss your hopeless love lives."

That would sum up the event in a nutshell. Unfortunately, it comes nowhere close to summing up what happened next.

"Are you ever gonna get over her?"

I chose to ignore this rather blunt question as I continued typing up my newest blog post. My cousin had been asking that question more and more often, ever since she found out about my blog. The "Blog of the Lovelorn", as I dubbed it, had been created to detail my various stories of and interactions with my unrequited love.

I originally intended for it to be just a place to write down my feelings (God forbid a guy talking about his feelings) and/or experiences that involved her. I didn't exactly intend for it to evolve into one of the current most popular blogs in Japan. That just kinda happened.

And now, I am the sole admin of one of the biggest blogs in the whole nation. Despite that, however, I still find myself having private conversations with the original four or so online friends that first found this blog almost a year back.

After I finished typing out the post, I turned to my cousin, giving her a rather upbeat look. I had heard her say things like that so wearily often lately, and I never responded. However, today was different.

"What fun would that be?" I answered to her slightly annoyed face. "If I got over her, I'd probably get bored. There's no one else even remotely interesting in our high school, and I can't finish my second web novel without using an interesting girl like her. And besides…"

Sugu looked at me curiously, wondering what I had to say next. "If I didn't have an unrequited love for her, I would have nothing to blog about."

"Whatever," my cousin abruptly left the doorway to my dark room, lit mainly by the screen of my laptop. It was probably a beautiful summer morning outside, judging by the tiny ray of bright sunlight that peeked through my almost-closed curtains.

Well, I guess I'll be out there soon enough.

I looked over my rather short blog post, checking for any mistakes. Despite only being a few lines or so, it was subjected to a thorough grammar check, just like all of my other blog posts, which were usually much longer.

Hey, everyone! Kiri no Kenshi here!

So, on a whim, I decided to meet up IRL today with one of the first people to stumble across this blog. We recently found out that we live in the same area, so we thought it'd be nice to meet each other in person.

So yeah, I'll tell you all a bit about how it went later tonight. Make sure to check back next week for an excerpt from my second web novel!

Wish me luck!

-Kiri-dono out

I was beginning to wonder if this was really a good idea as I neared our designated meeting spot. I looked around nervously as I entered the food court of a close by mall, hoping I wouldn't see anyone I used to know.

I had essentially cut all of my old friends out of my non-school life soon after I started blogging a year back. I had no way of knowing if they really cared, but I seriously doubted it. I had already drifted quite far apart from most of them long before, when I had first started working on the web novel that has become almost as popular as my blog. The only one who stuck around until I completely traded my real social life for an online one was…

My unrequited love.

But honestly, I preferred it that way. It's much less painful to watch from a distance than it is to be right beside her with the knowledge that she would never return my feelings.

Speak of the devil.

There she was, walking right towards the food court where I sat. It took me about five seconds to register that she was indeed heading my direction, and that she happened to be alone, for some reason. After I cut her off a year back, she inexplicably became incredibly popular, so it was extremely rare to see her out and about without an entourage of other popular kids from our school.

The moment she set foot on the checkered tiles of the food court, I realized that I had been staring at her for quite a while. Luckily, she didn't seem to have noticed this. I quickly turned away, seeing her look over at me out of the corner of my eye before she left my vision entirely.

Violet, huh? That's not a color I expected to see her dye her hair with.

I hadn't seen her since summer vacation started about a week back. At that point, she had dyed her hair light brown to match that of another popular girl who she had befriended. Asuna, was it? I didn't remember.

I knew she had a thing for dying her hair, but I never expected a deep violet. She once told me that she hated her naturally black hair, and that she wished she had a lighter color.

Well, I guess it matches her eyes pretty well.

It took me a moment to register a familiar hand waving in front of my face. At the same time, I heard her voice call me by my old nickname.

"Hello? Earth to Kirito!"

It took me a few more seconds to realize that I should probably formulae a response sometime within the next ten seconds. Unfortunately, my year-long lack of adequate human interaction had left me without the ability to quickly respond to people in spoken words.

I looked up to her face, seeing on it a smile that I had grown to love. It left me speechless for a few moments, but then, I finally found some words to utter.

"I figured that you'd forget about that nickname."

I nearly winced. That came out a lot more edgy than I intended it to. I looked back down at my lap, fully expecting her to verbally bite back, or maybe just walk away.

Instead, I got a flick to my temple, followed by a rather peppy response. "There's no way I could forget."

I had no clue how to respond to that. At this point, I just wanted her to leave, and for my online friend, known to me by the net name, 'HamayuuKi', to show up. Unfortunately, it seemed like neither of the above would happen anytime soon.

The girl next to me walked over to the seat across from me, sliding into it with the usual energetic flair that she seemed to put into everything she did. Once situated, she began speaking once more in her rather cute voice.

"Hey, you okay?"

Another line that caught me off guard. I knew she had always been perceptive, but I somehow forgot that she had a knack for reading me like a book. There was no point in simply telling her that I was 'fine'.

But I can't exactly tell her that I'm only here to meet up with an online friend with whom I would probably be talking about her.

"I'm just a bit miffed, I guess," I said after a few seconds' pause. "I'm waiting here for a friend, but it seems like she's running late."

"I find it hard to believe that you're waiting for a girl," she said in a tone that suggested she was annoyed at me for 'lying' to her. I didn't bother looking up to meet her eyes; it would probably only render me speechless for a couple of seconds anyway.

"Believe what you want," I replied a little colder than I intended. After a few seconds of silence, I decided that a change of subject was in order. "But anyway, why are you here? And why don't you have any friends with you?"

The first response I received was a nervous laugh, accompanied by a hand rubbing the back of her neck. When she finally spoke, it took all I had to keep myself from shouting a string of expletives.

"Ehehe… it's kind of embarrassing, but…" she trailed off for a moment before continuing. "I'm waiting for a friend I met online. Believe it or not, he's the creator of that really popular blog called the 'Blog of the Lovelorn'…"

My eyes widened for a moment, and I couldn't help but swear under my breath. "That's ironic…" I nearly punched myself in the face for saying that, and I felt my right fist ache for contact with my cheek when she looked at me inquisitively.

"What's ironic?" she queried, somehow not catching on yet.

I forced myself to take a deep breath in order to quell my growing urge to just bolt and never turn back. Finally, once I was absolutely certain that I could remain calm, I spoke.

"So, that must mean that you're HamayuuKi, huh?"

Now it was her turn to be speechless for a change. Her eyes widened to almost unrealistic proportions, and when she opened her mouth to say something, all that came out were a few incomprehensible failed attempts at some form of speech.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'," I said, closing my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, they had a much happier shine. It was completely forced, but with her current state, she probably couldn't tell.

"Well, how about I formally introduce myself?" I offered, taking advantage of her shocked stupor. "I'm Kirigaya Kazuto. My net name is 'Kiri no Kenshi', and I'm the creator and admin of the famous 'Blog of the Lovelorn'."

I extended my hand out to her, as if I were introducing myself to her for the first time. After that, it took a full ten seconds for the shock to fade from her face. Unfortunately, the next emotion to surface was a terrifying rage.

I shrunk back into my seat, closing my eyes tight and bracing for impact. Back when we were still friends, I found her rage absolutely petrifying, due to the usual physical pain that would come with it.

It took quite a while for me to realize that she wasn't going to slap me. When I finally opened my eyes, still a bit hesitantly, I found a look that I had never once seen in my seemingly-eternally happy ex-friend.

She looked… defeated. Broken. Empty.

Almost immediately, I found myself asking, "W-what's wrong?"

"Why?" she began, tears building up in her eyes. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I knew exactly what she was implying. Why didn't I tell her I was hurting so much over an unrequited love? But she didn't know; she had no idea how much that would have wrecked everything.

"Don't you trust me?" the tears warring with her eyes finally fell. I felt like total shit at that very moment.

There were no words to counter the last comment, so I didn't pay it any mind in my carefully-worded response. "It wouldn't have done any good."

That's it. That was my carefully-formulated response. As you can see, I had (and still have) just about zero people skills in real life. It's really a mystery how my books can have decent interpersonal dialogue.

"What do you mean?" she was nearly shouting with her cracking voice, making me wonder just how many people's eyes we were catching at that particular moment. "Why wouldn't it have done any good? Why couldn't I have helped you?"

It took a good thirty seconds to come up with an intelligible response for her. "I guess I owe you that much, since I had no idea that you actually cared this much."

I took a slow, even breath, preparing to deal the finishing blow to our old friendship. In the end, I chickened out. Nothing different, I suppose. "But not here. Check the blog tonight at seven; my answer and reasoning will be there.

"Since we probably won't see each other for a long while, I guess this is goodbye." With a distinct lack of energy, I got up from the table.

I heard the sniffling coming from behind me as I walked towards the exit of the food court, staring down at the red, white and black checkered tiles of the food court. It took everything I had, and then some, to keep walking away from her and pretend that I didn't feel like a complete douchebag.

But there's just no way I could keep being her friend. Not after tonight.

With those thoughts plaguing my mind, I walked further and further away from my childhood friend and unrequited love, Yuuki Konno.

"The heck happened to you out there? You're the exact opposite of when you left the house this morning."

I ignored my cousin's gruff question as best as I could as I slowly typed out my blog post. I knew she meant well; she just had a hard time keeping her temper down, like she had ever since I cut her off for the most part along with everyone else.

I had finished making an image containing that meme phrase just a few minutes before she barged into my room, with a slight change.

"Somewhat-relatable teenager post #3721

That depressing moment when you find out that your unrequited love is that online friend you're meeting IRL so you can both discuss your hopeless love lives."

I put it in a crimson background to show the depressed, as well as somewhat foul, mood I felt at that particular moment.

All I had left were a few words before I would be able to post. And with good timing, too, I noted as I looked at the clock in the corner of my taskbar. It had just turned to 6:53 p.m.

A few minutes later, and I finally finished writing. I checked it over for mistakes, reading,

Evening to you all. Kiri no Kenshi here with a status update for you all.

If you'll notice, I didn't start the message with my usual pep in the form of exclamation marks. Well, I hope that's an indicator of the mood of this message.

I'll let the image below, based off the "That awkward moment" meme, give you the general happenings of today.

«Insert: Depressing as »

As you can see, I've totally screwed myself over here. Such is the way my real life goes, I guess.

How do I say it…? I guess there were a lot of ways this could have gone wrong, with the actual events of today being but one of the outcomes. I won't bore you by pointing out all of them, don't worry.

Anyway, I guess that's it for now. Sorry for unloading this on you all, though it's not like it should be too new for a depressing blog like this anyway. Just one more thing before I go.

If you're reading this, Yuu-chan… I'm sorry.

I looked at the clock again, finding the time to be 6:59. I moved my mouse to hover over the 'publish' button, hand shaking as I thought of the possible outcomes that this post could have, should Yuuki ever read it.

But I had steeled myself for this moment in the past several hours. I couldn't back down now; that would make me a liar. I had to own up to my feelings, no matter how badly I screwed it up.

I sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, willing the clock to move forward before I lost my resolve. I had to do this; if I didn't do it now, then I would probably never muster up the courage again.

At last, the clock changed to 7:00 p.m. Exactly one second later, the post button had been clicked, and four seconds after that, I had put my full feelings out there.

Is this what confessing your love for someone feels like? I'm a nervous wreck, and I didn't even directly confess.

It took fifteen minutes for me to work up the nerve to get up from my seat. I had been staring into space the whole time, imagining infinite scenarios which could play out with my blog post at a catalyst, but mission control finally managed to contact me and order me to come back down to earth. How, you ask?

Someone was knocking at my door. And I don't mean the front door to the house. No, I mean my bedroom door. This raised a set of questions that implored an answer.

If it were Sugu, she would have just barged in without regards to my privacy. If it were my aunt, Midori, she would have said something right after knocking, then come in with little, yet more than the former's, regard for my privacy.

And yet, neither of those actions had taken place. There was just a knocking, and then silence. No barging in, no voice, no anything.

It piqued my interest enough to warrant answering the knocking. Of course, that was probably the worst course of action available to me, which I realized as soon as I opened the door.

"Who is…?"

I stopped mid-sentence when I looked up at the ground to face…

The very subject of my post. The last person I could call a friend. My unrequited love.

Yuuki Konno.

Thus ends part one of a totally short-assed story.

Not much to say here, other than asking for a review from you, if you would be so kind. However, please be as polite as to give honest, constructive criticism, and refrain from one-liners that tell me to update right after publishing this first chapter. There is nothing more annoying to me than a review telling me to update soon right after posting a chapter to any of my stories. The exception to the rule, of course, would be the addition of substance enough to prove that you are capable of coherent thought.

Well, I guess that's it for now. Sorry for the rant about reviews; it's something that I feel very strongly about.

I guess I'll see you in part two, should you be interested in reading further. Dunno when you'll see it, but it'll probably be later this month.